Border Fever

by Pronzini, Bill

  BORDER FEVER

  By Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallmann

  Originally published under the pseudonym William Jeffrey

  First Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2013 by Bill Pronzini

  Partial cover image courtesy of:

  http://fantasystock.deviantart.com

  http://struckdumb.deviantart.com/

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  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Book List

  STORY COLLECTIONS:

  Carmody’s Run

  Case File

  More Oddments

  Night Freight

  Oddments

  On Account of Darkness

  Problems Solved

  Scenarios

  Sleuths

  Small Felonies

  Spadework

  Stacked Deck

  NON-FICTION:

  Gun in Cheek: An Affectionate Guide to the Worst in Mystery Fiction

  Son of Gun in Cheek

  WESTERNS:

  Border Fever

  Day of the Moon

  Duel at Gold Buttes

  Gallows Land

  Starvation Camp

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  CONTENTS

  BORDER FEVER

  A Preview of GRAVE MEN

  A Preview of KITT PEAK

  Chapter One

  Adobe Junction’s largest and finest hotel, La Hacienda, was situated in the center of town, not far from the railroad yards on one side and the Mexican quarter on the other. It was a three story building with an ornate false front, and it provided the softest beds in the territory of Arizona, if the lettering on the sign stretched above its entrance could be believed.

  Clement Holmes, who was resting in the iron four-poster in his second-floor room, did not believe the sign at all. “I’ve slept on rocky hillsides softer than this mattress,” he growled.

  A distinguished-looking diplomat in his mid-sixties, Holmes was dressed in a flannel nightshirt and a quilted bed jacket; his black Cassimere suit and vest hung in the room’s wardrobe. His long silver hair and luxuriant beard gleamed in the dim lamplight which spread across the white coverlet tucked almost to his chin.

  His surliness was due not only to the bed. He also was suffering from the grippe, which he had contracted en route to Adobe Junction. It was a minor case, but like a severe cold, had made him grouchy and miserable with a slight fever, bronchial inflammation, catarrhal discharge, and intestinal disorder. And because of its contagiousness, he had been compelled to postpone his plans—indeed, the entire mission—for at least another day.

  “I tell you, Captain,” Holmes continued, taking a swallow of Dr. Worden’s Electric Blackberry Balsam, which the town druggist had assured him was the finest remedy available. “I tell you, except for this damned grippe, I am convinced the worst dangers are over, and we’ve nothing more to worry about.”

  “I hope so, sir, but I’d still feel better if you’d let Flynn and Meckleburg stay here in the room with you.” Captain Oak M’Candliss of Governor Shannon’s special contingent of Territorial Rangers gripped his hat in his hands, nervous and a bit embarrassed by this hitch in plans. Although he couldn’t be expected to control Clement Holmes’ health, he nonetheless was responsible for the mission’s safety and success, now more than ever. “I’ve got a feeling that something’s about to happen.”

  “Balderdash,” Holmes said firmly. “Heartburn, maybe, after that dinner I had.” He glanced with a frown toward the tray of dirty dishes. “Worst food south of Tucson, I swear.”

  “Yes, sir, but the banditos—”

  “Esteban’s renegades wouldn’t dare strike here.”

  “They haven’t had any qualms about crossing the border before,” M’Candliss protested. “And Esteban has publicly threatened to stop anyone getting in his way, which certainly includes you—”

  “Enough,” Holmes said, his tone brooking no argument. “Now here, Captain, have one of my cigars, and take a couple to your men. They’re both just next door, I’ve got strong lungs, and the walls are thinner than glass-cloth. They’ll have no trouble hearing me if I so much as belch in my sleep.”

  M’Candliss took the proffered cigars, but he wasn’t assured that his assignment to protect Clement Holmes—among others—could not be improved upon. “If you insist, sir. But I won’t rest, not until you—all of you—are safely in Prescott.”

  “Neither will I, if truth be known,” Holmes said. “But...”

  “Sir?”

  “It’s not only the banditos I’m concerned about. If there’s to be trouble, it could come from many quarters.” Holmes picked up his bottle of patent medicine again, then paused, smiling faintly. “But it won’t be tonight, Captain. Not here, and not tonight.”

  The Ranger went to the door. “I trust not, sir.”

  M’Candliss went a few feet to the door of the adjoining room, knocked once, and entered. Two burly men looked up from where they were playing pinochle.

  “A gift from Mr. Holmes,” he said, handing each of them a cigar. “Everything all right in here?”

  “It is now, Cap,” the one with the beard said.

  “Yeah, this sure beats Flynn’s chawing tobacco,” the other one said. He tore the band off his cigar. “Thanks.”

  “Thank Mr. Holmes, next time you see him,” M’Candliss said. “And there’d better be a next time, so look alive, you two.”

  “Don’t worry, Cap. You going to see Gueterma now?”

  “Right. I shouldn’t be long.”

  “You want one of us along?”

  M’Candliss shook his head. “There’re six in Gueterma’s party, and half of them are bodyguards. No, it’s our man next door who needs protection, if anyone does.” He returned to the door, turning to add: “At least the amount of protection three men can spread over him and seven others.”

  The door shut behind M’Candliss as he strode along the corridor to the curving staircase that swept down to the lobby. Behind the marble-countered desk, the wizened, chinless clerk paused while stuffing messages in the bank of pigeon-holes and grinned deferentially. “Evening,” the clerk said. M’Candliss nodded while passing, pushed through the glass-paned entrance door, and went outside.

  M’Candliss cut across the dusty main street and headed south along the boardwalk toward Adobe Junction’s premier restaurant, El Sacacorchos. As to be expected in a southwestern Arizona town, the restaurant specialized in Mexican dishes, and unlike the hotel, it lived up to its self-proclaimed reputation.

  In fact, El Sacacorchos was an oasis of elegance in an otherwise crude and often rowdy cowtown. Adobe Junction lay upon a flat crescent of land, the wide, near-empty wash of Pimento River curving around it on one side, with a scattering of trees and a spur of the Southern Pacific on the other. The town was center of the area by virtue of being a railhead, and was the largest settlement between Phileaux Bend and Sonoita, on the border with Mexico—excellent reasons for the converging of gandy
dancers and gamblers, ranchers and hustlers, cowpokes and drifters into one brawling, hard-drinking melee. Fighting, swearing, dying; they were all in a night’s action.

  This particular night was still young, it barely being past sunset. The saloons hadn’t yet poured sufficient liquor to goad the senses, and most of the regular shops and stores were closed until the morrow. Lancer’s Emporium . . . Agave Saloon and Card Room... Prinzoni’s Barber Shop... Wellmenn’s Bunks, for those unable to afford the hotel... a blacksmith shop, set flush against the livery, across the street from which was the jail made of adobe with iron-barred windows. There were other buildings and signs stretching on down the street, but M’Candliss turned off on the other side of the livery stable, onto a path leading to the porch of a whitewashed adobe building.

  The soft gray of dusk silhouetted the hardened features of M’Candliss, an Arizonan by birth and spirit. Raised on a hardscrabble ranch along the San Pedro River, he had learned cattle and tracking from the time he could barely sit a horse. With the wanderlust of youth, he had enlisted in the Fourth Cavalry, serving first as trooper, then scout, and eventually brevet officer, and twice was singled out for special honors because of his reckless bravery and steady nerves while battling the fierce Aravaipas and Pinals. Then, following the massacre of his parents and two elder brothers during a cross-border raid by the Chiricahuas, M’Candliss had resigned to return and run the small homestead and eventually to marry a local rancher’s daughter. He had thought of himself as a settled man.

  But when his beloved wife, Rachel, had been assaulted and murdered there by a trio of wandering hard cases, M’Candliss had left the ranch, selling out, unable to face the losses it represented. He had applied to the newly-formed Territorial Rangers, and had passed the stringent requirements with ease, for he was an experienced cowpuncher and tracker with a working ability in Spanish, who knew the harsh land and could survive for days on jerky and pinole, and who could shoot swift and straight and be trusted to obey orders. And M’Candliss possessed the necessary motivation: he was determined now to help clean up the Territory, to make it a place where decent men and women could live in peace and security. He was a lonely man, but one tough Ranger.

  M’Candliss stepped up to the porch, and El Sacacorchos’ mustachioed primero camarero opened the door and frowned as he surveyed how the Ranger was dressed. M’Candliss ignored the unspoken disapproval, brushing past and heading for the private dining room, which had been reserved for Frederico Gueterma and his party. Tall, lean, his leathery cheeks the color of bronze, his unruly chestnut hair bleached almost blond, M’Candliss was in his workaday garb of flannel shirt, worn leather vest, and faded Levis. The head waiter might not like it, and perhaps some of the more pompous dignitaries might not like it, but as far as M’Candliss was concerned, his assignment was to protect Gueterma, not to ride as part of the Mexican’s decorative honor guard. And to his mind that meant he was excused from having to wear such tomfooleries as a starched bosom shirt and pin-striped monkey suit.

  He paused by the entrance to the private dining room. Inside, seated at the head of the silver-and china-laden table, was Frederico Gueterma, the special emissary of the President of Mexico, General Porfirio Diaz. Darkly handsome and sporting a trimmed Van Dyke beard, Gueterma had struck M’Candliss as not only a suave and sophisticated diplomat, but as a sharp-witted, entertaining, pleasant companion since their initial meeting that morning in the small border village of Sonoita.

  As befitted his station, Gueterma was resplendent in a black silk suit with a diagonal red military stripe running across the breast. A silver medallion hung from his neck, gleaming in the lantern light filling the private side room of the restaurant.

  Six other men, all young junior officers in General Diaz’s government, were lined three to either side of Gueterma. They wore dress uniforms heavy with gold braid and carried side arms in buttoned holsters, and gleaming swords in ornate scabbards. Their faces looked rosily flushed and a little sweaty, either from the heat, their stifling uniforms, or an overindulgence of wine—or, most likely, a combination of all three.

  “Ah, Capitan M’Candliss,” Gueterma said warmly, glancing up from the table. “Come, join us—we were just having dessert.”

  “Thanks.” M’Candliss smiled but shook his head. “I’d better not. I’m not really dressed for the occasion.”

  “Nonsense. We envy you your comfort, eh, compadres?”

  And Gueterma’s six companions smiled and laughed on cue, while the emissary’s brilliant white teeth flashed good-naturedly. M’Candliss’ own smile turned tight and ironic. He was a solitary individual, taciturn and fiercely proud, and he bowed to no man, although he respected many. It amused him, yet it made him a little sad, to see these men fawning over the Mexican official.

  “I insist,” Gueterma continued. He raised the crystal snifter he held in his right hand. “We’ve had a most excellent repast, Capitan, and now a most excellent brandy as well. I insist—if not for dessert, at least for a small libation.”

  M’Candliss shrugged and crossed to the chair at the end of the table. “You outrank me, so I must oblige,” he said as he sat down facing Gueterma. “I do so with pleasure and honor.”

  “Good, good,” Gueterma said. He passed the snifter and an empty glass to M’Candliss. “Now tell me, how is Señor Holmes?”

  “Better.”

  “Then we’ll be able to travel on to Prescott tomorrow?”

  “Can’t really tell for sure, not until we see how he’s feeling in the morning.” M’Candliss sipped his brandy; it was smooth, a refreshing change from the usual rotgut whiskey he drank while out in the field. “If I judge Clement Holmes right, though, he’ll insist on going, no matter how sick he is. We might have to rope him in bed.”

  Gueterma chuckled. “No, it would not do to weary the man.”

  “It’s more than just the problem of transporting a sick man,” M’Candliss said, becoming serious. “I’m pretty sure he’s past the critical stage, but we can’t afford the risk of spreading his grippe. There’d be real trouble if, say, you and your men caught it now, on the eve of the conference.”

  Now Gueterma grew somber. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  “Or if the other delegates coming to Prescott came down with it,” M’Candliss said. “Clement Holmes is the advance representative of the United States; it would be a major disaster if he proved to be the advance representative of a diplomatic epidemic as well.”

  “Qué mala suerte,” Gueterma murmured, frowning.

  “Yeah, it would be bad luck if it happened,” M’Candliss agreed. “But like I say, I think the danger’s passed—”

  In that moment, with no advance warning whatsoever, the rear and kitchen doors to the dining room burst open and heavily armed men poured in, surrounding the table. M’Candliss lunged from his chair, his right hand fanning down for the butt of his Colt .45. The Mexican honor guard were also reaching for their weapons, but all of them froze before they had completed their draws. Reason overcame reflex, in the face of cocked and leveled repeating carbines, and a sharp command from one of the intruders:

  “Do not move, señors, if you value your lives! Hold and be silent before the men of the mighty Ramon Esteban!!”‘

  M’Candliss let his hand drop from his holster, slowly straightening as he accepted the futility of the situation. He studied the men who had burst into the room, counting half a dozen of them, most heavily bearded, two in dirty white Mexican peon clothes and the others wearing tattered trail garb. All had bandoliers strung diagonally across their chests, a mockery of Gueterma’s proper military stripe, and all wore wide-brimmed sombreros pulled low, shading their faces.

  He wondered fleetingly how they had gotten through the kitchen without raising an alarm. Then a moan from that direction gave him his answer. Some of them must have struck the cook and waiter down swiftly and silently, while others massed at the rear door.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Gueter
ma demanded. Unlike his rigidly motionless men, he had scraped back his chair and was rising to his full six feet. Outraged indignation hardened his features. “Leave at once!”

  “Silencio!” the one who had spoken before snapped. He was short and barrel-chested, and wore a murderous expression. Without turning his head, he barked: “Fernando! Pepe! Take the Federalista to the horses.”

  Immediately, two of the marauders jumped forward and seized Gueterma by the arms. Despite his struggling, he was half dragged, half carried across the floor to the rear door and out into the night beyond.

  The honor guard—and M’Candliss—stirred as they watched the abduction. Their hands made no suicidal moves toward their holstered weapons.

  The leader of the banditos raised his left hand, holding his Henry .44 rifle steadily with the right. The remaining three men began to back toward the same rear door through which Gueterma had been taken, their eyes unblinking and malevolent. When they were all a step from the threshold, they seemed to move side by side, almost imperceptibly, as if the maneuver had been prearranged.

  “And now, señors...” the leader began, his lips parting in an ugly parody of a grin that revealed several gold teeth. The Henry rifle rose slightly in his hands.

  M’Candliss realized in that instant what was going to happen; realized that the banditos, having successfully kidnapped Gueterma, would show those of lesser importance no quarter. They intended to shoot in cold blood, to wipe out the witnesses.

  “Look out!” he shouted. “They’re going to—”

  The rest of his desperate warning was lost in the eruption of four repeating carbines firing simultaneously. The noise in the room was deafening. M’Candliss twisted back away from the table in a flat horizontal dive as bullets screamed and buzzed on all sides of him. Men cried out in agony and bodies spilled across the dining table, sending plates and dishes crashing to the floor.